Chapter 4 Overview: Communicating with........ everyone!

Even though telephones were the primary means of communication in the 90’s, e-mail is now “… one of the most popular online communication tools.” (170) E-mail can be used for both personal and business communications and actually outweighs paper mail! Not all email is legitimate. Some of it may be Spam or junk that you don’t want or need to read. E-mail is faster, easier, and less expensive than other means of communication. To receive e-mails, a user must have an e-mail address. The address must have a user ID, host name, and top-level domain. The user ID identifies the receiving party while the host name identifies the receiving party’s server that houses the account.

http://tinyurl.com/c8n5cfz

What’s really neat (and something I never really thought about) is that “The steps in the transmission of an e-mail message from origin to destination address, using servers instead of post offices, parallel those followed in the delivery of letter by a traditional postal service.” (172) There are several different e-mail clients or programs that can be installed on a computer and used to “… create, send, and receive e-mail messages.” (172) An example of an e-mail client is Microsoft Outlook.  Once an e-mail client is installed, it must be set up “… to sync and download e-mail from your e-mail address.” (172) E-mail clients provide the user with the ability to create, save, and sort messages. There are several protocols used when sending electronic communications. See the image below for steps involved in sending and receiving e-mail messages.

http://tinyurl.com/coylu32

Different servers handle incoming messages in different ways. A POP (Post Office Protocol) server allows the e-mail client to handle all “mail management functions” such as downloading and storing messages. On a POP server however, only the computer that was used to download or store the message(s) can be used to view these messages going forward. An IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) server keeps control of the mail management right on the server. The act of sorting messages (among other things) is actually happening on the IMAP server.  

Shelly and Campbell focus on instructions for use of Windows Live Mail from pages 176 – 207. They cover (among other things) different menu options (some shown below), receiving and replying to messages, viewing and saving attachments, forwarding messages, etc.

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There are two inserts within this section that are worthy of mention. The first one speaks about Cyber bullying which Shelley and Campbell defines as “… any Internet activity that is intended to hurt or humiliate someone.” (188) Cyber bullying can include inappropriate e-mails, pictures and the like being shared online. Unfortunately, instances of cyber bullying are becoming more frequent and often result in even worse situations.

Another noteworthy topic is e-mail viruses. Not surprisingly, e-mail is one of the most popular ways to infect other computers with viruses. Viruses that come from e-mails could damage the recipient’s computer and even allow access to an unauthorized user! I knew about viruses, but not about worms. Apparently, worms can also infect computers by distributing viruses. Now, while a virus “… attaches itself to programs and documents, an e-mail worm is self-replicating.” (207) Another type of threat is a “Trojan horse” which comes as an attachment in an e-mail and seems like it would be beneficial, but once opened allows a hacker to gain access to your computer. What a crazy world we live in!

How irritating is junk mail, let alone junk e-mail? Some are legitimate advertisements, but others are once again trying to obtain your information for unscrupulous purposes. Some of the most common scams come in the form of phishing e-mails, which try to get personal information like account and credit card numbers. Other scams involve investing in stock with the goal of “inflating” its value. Yet another scam is the “Nigerian Sting” operation, which deals with fraudulent monetary requests. There are several more but thankfully, there are ways to block some of this “junk e-mail” and protect yourself.

Mailing lists allow those who use e-mail “… to exchange information, opinions, and ideas about particular subjects …” (209) with other people that could be located anywhere. List servers get the messages to the subscribers, but you need special software called LISTSERV or Majordomo “… to facilitate the exchange of e-mail among members; the mailing list also must have a moderator or list owner who handles administrative tasks.” (209) To be on a mailing list, one would need to subscribe to it. 

http://www.kswla.org/listservs.htm

Instead of mailing lists, some companies use “… e-mail marketing and online survey technologies.” (210) Specific software can actually help these companies gauge the effectiveness of their respective marketing campaigns. This e-mail marketing software has the ability to see how many times “… the e-mail was read, how many times the recipients clicked a link in the e-mail, and then finally how many times the recipients purchased a product or enrolled in a service.” (210-11) To receive these types of e-mails, a user must opt-in. They do this by giving their e-mail address to the company. 

http://tinyurl.com/c238z99

Another way to find out what people like or don’t like is through online survey technologies that usually come via e-mail with a link to click on. 

Web-based e-mail services are available through both browsers and Web sites and can be used by people who do not own computers but have access to public ones. The same functionality applies to Web-based e-mail as e-mail clients but since Web-based email can be sent and received from anywhere, it may be preferable. An example of a Web-based email service is Yahoo! Mail. Pages 213 – 225 discuss setting up and managing a Web-based e-mail account.

Social Media tools give people the ability “… to communicate, collaborate, and share over the Internet.” (226) Social networking involves people connecting with others and sharing common interests. There is traditional social networking that happens “… in a physical space …” (227), like classrooms or other public places but online social networking is more popular than ever. Social Networking Web sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are used not only by individuals but by businesses as well. 

We’ve all been trying to maintain our respective blogs to share our thoughts and get feedback. How about microblogging or combining blogging and instant messaging and sharing your brief messages on a public site? We all had to create Twitter accounts that feature things like hashtags or indicators that messages are part of a popular topic. There are also “online bulletin boards” or newsgroups that became available over Usenet network in the 80’s. Another option is “online discussion forums” called Web-based discussion groups. (231) 

http://tinyurl.com/bstq3bh

Usenet has several servers that use NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) to send messages. “Each news server stores the messages of the newsgroups it hosts; the server also polls the other news servers at fixed intervals to find the new messages for its subscribed newsgroups from those servers. The servers then download the new messages to be able to provide them locally.” (232) 

Newsgroups have unique identifying names that are “multilevel” or increasingly detailed “… based on content.” (232) 

Users must have something called an NNTP client or newsreader that is software allowing users access to read these “newsgroup messages”. 

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~lcall/354/week_four.html

Text messaging or Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) let users send short messages using cell phones. Since space is limited, people use abbreviations and numbers to replace letters. Chatting allows people to text message in “real time” using an interface. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was used to chat before the Web but you needed an application on your computer to get to the Internet. Channels or chat rooms offer focused discussion topics for users. Web-based chat gives the opportunity to communicate via Web browser as opposed to the previous referenced application. Shelley and Campbell provide some tips for chatting, such as not using your real name or any personal information, make sure the site does not display your IP address, and remember that not everything is, as it seems. Instant messaging (IM) is another type of chat that is both private and real-time.

http://tinyurl.com/dy4lxyl

Wikis are used to share information, much like Web pages. While those viewing them cannot change Web pages, wikis can be.

We discussed social bookmarking in another post, but the authors give a good overview of social tagging where sites permit “… users to post a Web page favorite or bookmark to a public Web site, and then tag the bookmark with keywords.” (239) Social opinion sites are the last topic of this chapter and allow people to share reviews of products and services.

What a broad range of options we have. There are several ways to communicate and share ideas with one another, no matter how near or far they may be. With family overseas, all I can say is thank goodness for the Worldwide Web!

Work Cited:

Shelly, Gary B., and Jennifer T. Campbell. Discovering the Internet. Fourth ed. Boston: Course Technology, Cengage Learning, 2012. 169-243. Print.